Email of the day (1)
Comment of the Day

January 23 2012

Commentary by David Fuller

Email of the day (1)

On last Friday's lead item:
"You commented on the email referring to technical advances improving agricultural returns and hence saving the poor from starvation:

"My view - Not everyone will like the conclusions in this intelligent article, because they clash with our romanticised fantasies of what life on our planet should be like... that is... if we could downsize to the global population of the 18th century while retaining our more comfortable technology. However, this does not seem very fair on the people we would have to lose".

I do not understand the relevance of being unfair to people who never have been born. How can that be so?

I think David Attenborough is right. An ever increasing population is a threat to mankind, whatever technical advances are made.

David Fuller's view It was a mildly 'tongue-in-cheek' comment because how do we roll back the population significantly without war, mass euthanasia or stringent population controls?

Re the splendid David Attenborough, I think mankind has always been under threat - from other carnivores, an unstable planet and especially from our own species. Nevertheless, do you not agree that evidence from developed economies shows that the most satisfactory methods of population control are the emancipation and education of women, contraception and economic prosperity?

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